Editorial: Strawberry talks key to seminary plan

The Golden Gate Baptist Seminary property is a jewel when it comes to Marin real estate — a large swath of bayside property just minutes from San Francisco.

The seminary, in fact, was there long before developers built many of the homes that now border its 126-acre campus.

Over the years, the school has been a quiet neighbor, although in recent years there have been a few flaps over the seminary's proposals to sell off edges of its property for homesites in order to cover the school's costs.

Neighbors have been worried about increased traffic and loss of the visual and physical elbow room they appreciate.

Those concerns were part of Strawberry residents' recent criticism of the county's designation of the area as one of the Bay Area's so-called "priority development areas," setting the stage for development of transit-oriented affordable housing.

Neighbors' strong objections to the designation finally led to the county Board of Supervisors to scratch Strawberry from its list of designated sites.

Neighbors said little effort was made to involve Strawberry residents in the decision-making process when the designation was determined.

Facing the future use of the seminary property, Strawberry residents are taking steps to get out in front of the planning process. They hired well-known Marin transportation consultant Robert Harrison to take a look at the potential traffic ramifications of turning the seminary into a 1,000-student high school campus and construction of 300 town homes.

The number of town homes reflects the student housing that already exists on campus and the number called for in the county's long-term land-use plans for the area.

A development team representing the Ross-based trust that has a pending purchase of the seminary has outlined similar conceptual plans in meetings with local homeowners. They have been meeting with neighbors in hope of finding common ground.

It is unusual for homeowners to go to the expense of hiring their own traffic consultant, especially before any development blueprints have been submitted. But after the debate over the PDA designation, neighbors are more being more proactive.

A spokesperson for neighbors says the traffic study shows that the proposed level of development could turn into a local traffic headache and the development team should "rethink" its plans to come up with something "more reasonable."

Traffic is not a new concern for Strawberry neighbors. Similar concerns were even raised before the county approved the In-N-Out Burger restaurant on the freeway frontage. Its absence of a customary drive-through was a county concession to those concerns. Many neighbors also protested the county's plans to run a public transit shuttle through their neighborhood, even though the goal was to provide local residents with a way to get around without having to drive themselves.

The level of traffic addressed in Harrison's report trumps both of those projects.

It is a little early in the process for neighbors to dig in, but their traffic study certainly puts their concerns front and center in discussions about the future of the seminary property.

There's no way to avoid that issue, but there are ways to address residents' concerns.

Although there has been talk of the campus being sold to a private school, such as Branson School of Ross, no plans have been submitted to the county.

Branson officials have said they have been looking at ways to grow their enrollment, now restricted by a cap set by Ross voters. They have not, however, announced they plan to move to the seminary property.

There certainly would be advantages to having a prestigious school in the neighborhood. It would be attractive to many home buyers. That might be a worthwhile consideration.

Finding common ground on the future use of the seminary property is going to be challenging for the residents, the seminary and the buyers.

Building political trenches is not the best approach toward reaching that point.

Being reasonable and responsive might be more productive in coming up with a plan that neighbors want to live next to and one that meets the hopes of the seminary and the new owner.